Was it Einstein who said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe?
With a doubling rate of 3.5 years (for 20% compound interest calculated for example daily or monthly) then for every 3 and a bit doublings there is an increase by an order of magnitude/factor of 10. So for a hundred thousand dollars invested, in 35 years at 20% compounding it should be 100 million dollars. With another 10 and a half years it should be a billion dollars, and with a further 10 and a half years it should be ten billion dollars. Now WB is a bit more wealthy than that so maybe add another 7 years or so to increase by a factor of 4 and get say 40 billion dollars in 62 years. I think he is quite old but depending on his starting age, and his lump sum starting figure (100,000 was really a stupendous figure in 1955) it is about right or at least in the ballpark.

My view is that this is a systematic issue. And while we're posting interesting economics videos, here's one for the pot...

He is an idiot. It was the "free-market" that demanded the mark to market rule in the first place. But all he wanted to do was blame the "govmint". The Republicans, in a fever of right wing ideology, blocked any attempts by Obama or anyone else on the left put reasonable regulations or restraints on the market.

The power of the right wing ideology also affected the style of the financial bail-outs. In the USA, the government gave financial relief to banks and corporations, with the insane idea that things would "trickle down".

In Australia, we did the opposite. We gave money to people. People had more money so they spent more, paid of debts, etc, while the Government underwrote [guaranteed, but did not financially aid] banks and financial institutions.

This injected confidence into the economy and got things turning again. Many fewer people defaulted on loans than previously, and we did not have the silly "mark to market rule" anyway. The other things was that Aussie banks had to hold reserves, and loans were more regulated. Of course, Australia was exposed to the world situation, but we had less of a crash and recovered more quickly.

Well, another right-wing idiot economist. Perhaps less moronic than most, but there it is.

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Just stick to the idea that science tests falsifiable hypotheses to destruction.

Was it Einstein who said that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe?
With a doubling rate of 3.5 years (for 20% compound interest calculated for example daily or monthly) then for every 3 and a bit doublings there is an increase by an order of magnitude/factor of 10. So for a hundred thousand dollars invested, in 35 years at 20% compounding it should be 100 million dollars. With another 10 and a half years it should be a billion dollars, and with a further 10 and a half years it should be ten billion dollars. Now WB is a bit more wealthy than that so maybe add another 7 years or so to increase by a factor of 4 and get say 40 billion dollars in 62 years. I think he is quite old but depending on his starting age, and his lump sum starting figure (100,000 was really a stupendous figure in 1955) it is about right or at least in the ballpark.

Good analysis. But remember also that Warren Buffett has made a lot of money out of investing other people's money for them and taking a chunk of the return he can get for them. WB would be able to command higher fees and commissions on the investments he manages on account of being WB.

I would go further though. The economic problems of globalisation and automation are institutionalised world-wide, not only because the USA owns the vast bulk of patients and copyright, but countries or regions with no safety net will be vulnerable to the uber-predators.

And I agree that the situation is non-partisan, which means the vast majority of governments should be behind enforcing their own styles of democracy. By this I don't mean terrorising people or nationalising corporations. It means if there are clauses in trade agreements that act against any national interest, they must be reviewed or abandoned. If a local jurisdiction bans fracking in that area, a corporation cannot sue a government, or seek compensation, because it cannot frack in that area. It either makes fracking safe, or goes somewhere else where fracking does not cause environmental harm or social conflict.

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Just stick to the idea that science tests falsifiable hypotheses to destruction.

Well, another right-wing idiot economist. Perhaps less moronic than most, but there it is.

about sums it up. the guy is a known "free markets can't be wrong. just get the govt out and all will be OK". he'd be right, if he added "... for me" to that sentence.

As I said before, I think the problems here are fundamentally systematic. The lo-to-no regulation guys, even given the say and sway they currently exert, are just a part of the larger issue - which by my lights is bound to rather partial and sketchy, and perhaps even unarticulated, ideas about what economies are for. Most trickle-down no-to-lo regulations guys seem to think about economies as being mostly about money - and in that they're mostly about their money and how it can be maximised. The problems of income disparity are not abstract problems, they're human problems.

The late Hans Rosling had a view on this which challenged certain assumptions about economies being a kind of wild force--like a hurricane or tsunami--either we bend into the wind or ride the wave, but either way economies are a beast that cannot be resisted, let alone controlled. Economies, somehow, just are.

Humans developed and instituted these systems, systems which essentially codify the terms of particular kinds of human relationships, and likewise we can unmake them and develop new approaches, foster new kinds of relationships. However, we can only do that well if we know what it is we actually want to achieve, and why. As Rosling said, the seemingly impossible is possible - we can think beyond the obvious and make a good world.